Pattern crimes

A POSTCARD FROM VIENNA

BIG SUR, CALIFORNIA

He woke up suddenly and then he remembered: Today was his birthday. Today he was sixty years old.

He was sweating. The sheets were damp. His nightmare had been terrible.

"Anna!"

No answer. He opened his eyes. Light was streaming in through the shutters. He squinted. Another blinding California day. They were all blinding here.

The dogs! Where were the dogs? "Irina!"

When he heard her footsteps he lay back against his pillows and composed his face.

"Happy birthday." She gave him her look when she said it, the one she'd been giving him for years. It reminded him of her expression of amusement and contempt from the days, so long ago, when they still made love.

The dogs bounded in after her, Boris and Peter, great black shaggy leaping things, eyes moist, excited, gums wet, salivating. He petted them, massaged their ears. The maid followed with his breakfast tray.

"Felicidad, Senor Targov." She was Mexican, young, pretty, dark. A good figure too-he often spied on her when she swam laps up and down the pool. While she arranged the tray, he watched Irina throw open the shutters.

"Take the dogs out with you, Bianca," she instructed the maid. Targov gave them each a final roughing of the ears.

"Why exile the dogs?"

"To talk privately."

"And you're afraid they'll overhear? Really, Irina, I think maybe you should go back to that psychiatrist."

She ignored him. "There's a load of mail. Letters, telegrams. The phone's already ringing."

"I'11 look at it all later. Rokovsky can handle the calls."

"That journalist, Boyce-he's coming for lunch."

"Fine. Serve something good. Not that salt-free stuff. Good Russian food today."

She didn't reply, and when he glanced up from his breakfast tray he saw that she was studying him.

"You're going to say something awful. I can feel it. So go ahead, Irina, say it now and leave."

He glanced at her again just as she smiled. Then it seemed to him that her entire face turned into a net of fine wrinkles and lines. The effect reminded him of a slow-motion film he'd once seen of a bullet fired at a pane of safety glass. The glass smooth and perfect, then suddenly crosshatched. When she smiled her face became a web.

"Anna wants to go." She announced the fact triumphantly.

"I'll talk to her."

"She's made up her mind."

"After all we've done for her."

"She acknowledges everything. Very grateful too. But now she's ready to move on. She doesn't like it here. A 'hothouse' atmosphere, she says."

"Hothouse!" He laughed. "Well, she may be right…"

"Of course she is. And much too young to be cooped up with us. Very comfortable here with the pool, the servants, but she's suffocating. She must get out, perform, and be with people her age."

"Find a nice young man. Isn't that what you mean?"

"Oh shut up! Here! I've been holding this." She flung a postcard at him. "It burns my hand!"

The card came at him fast, then stopped in midair, then fluttered down slowly until it settled on his quilt. He reached for it, but not before he glanced at her again. This time her expression was more than triumphal. It was gloating, crowing. God, how she must hate me, he thought.

He examined the card. A few words in Russian, a signature hastily scrawled. Then, when he understood what it was, he gasped and put it down.

"So he's out."

"At last!"

"Vienna?"

"A transit camp." She still wore her conquering look. He photographed her with his eyes, wanting to fix this image of her forever, knowing that someday he would look back upon this moment as one of the most crucial of his life.

"This didn't come today. Too big a coincidence. You've been holding it back."

"Only saving it for the proper time."

"My birthday! Irina, you're a snake."

"And what are you, Sasha?" she hissed. "Tell me-what are you?"

"I'm an old man," he said finally.

She laughed. "Sixty. That's nothing! You're strong as an ox."

"The nightmares…"

"You've always had them. Ever since…"

"My sheets are soaked."

She came beside the bed, touched the sheets. "Just night sweats. Nothing to worry about."

She sat down on the bed and arranged his napkin so he wouldn't spill coffee on his quilt. It was an amazing quilt. He'd designed it himself, a multicolored patchwork filled, like a Russian futurist painting of the 1920s, with curves and arabesques. People admired it. A collector wanted to buy it. There had even been an inquiry from a commercial bedding firm asking if he would consider licensing the design.

"Tell me about your dream."

"What?"

"Your nightmare, Sasha. I want to hear."

"Oh." He tried to remember. "I was to be assassinated. But I saw it all through the assassin's eyes."

"Tell me." Her voice was comforting now. She took a corner of his napkin and carefully wiped his brow.

"He had a rifle with a telescopic sight. He was up on the hill, in the woods above the road, and I was there too since I was him. He was waiting for me, lying prone in the leaves. There'd just been a rain and I could smell the earth. Then I saw myself through his sight. Do you understand? I saw myself enclosed in a circle, everything foreshortened, as if through a telescopic lens. I was on the terrace playing with the dogs. He set his cross-hairs on me. I could feel his excitement. And then, when he fired, I could feel the rifle jump. Next thing, I saw myself leaning over Boris, pressing my ear against his chest. Peter was crying. My beautiful Boris was dead! I became enraged. I saw myself furious, through his sight again, turning to him, shaking my fist."

"And?"

"I woke up. Ten, fifteen minutes ago."

"Oh, Sasha," she wiped his brow again, not so bad. Not really. A little nightmare, that's all. Just a little birthday morning dream. But," she added, "interesting."

"What?"

The way you see yourself, my dear. As a target. Furious and impotent." She laughed. "Isn't that a joke?"

"You pretend to be sympathetic until you get the goods. Then you turn nasty again."

She shrugged, got up from the bed, went to the window, looked down at the Pacific, the surf crashing against the rocks. You really think you're a government in exile? You! You have a Trotsky complex, Sasha. You dream of your assassination as if you're important enough for them to send out a special man to shoot you down. Such dramatizations! Such an ego you have! Meantime, the truth is you're bored and bottled up. You've barricaded us here in this super-luxurious concentration camp, and now you long for excitement, anything, even a KGB assassin to come and take a shot at you. So, okay, you want to be killed, why don't you go someplace where that will happen?" She turned to him, her mouth twisted. "And now you know just where to go, too, don't you? Don't you, Mister Toe-Kisser?" She flung the postcard at him again. "I'll see you at lunch." She turned her back and swept out of the room.

Boyce, the journalist, had intelligent eyes. He was in his late twenties with a good, young, well-shaped, eager face. The last interviewer, an awful British woman, had written Targov up as a nasty scold. But he was shrewd, was never burned twice. Boyce had written three intelligent letters, he'd sounded solid, and Rokovsky had checked him out. Many reporters had asked; only one could be chosen. In the end, he'd decided Boyce was worth the risk.

So, what must he think of us, our curious menage? Targov wondered. The burly lion, sixty years old today, his white hair flowing like a mane. The bitter wife with the spider-web face. The beautiful young cellist, dressed in jeans. And Rokovsky, the secretary, gaunt, balding, serious, suspicious. Quite a little group we must make, eating like peasants in the kitchen of our fancy fenced-in ranch beside the sea.

"Hope you don't mind eating in the kitchen, Mr. Boyce. We Russians always speak more candidly in our kitchens."

"I've had the pleasure of being received in many Russian kitchens, Mr. Targov. Little Moscow kitchens mostly. Never one like this."

"A kitchen is a kitchen," Irina said. And then in Russian: "Do you think he'd like it better if it stank of cabbage?" Anna and Rokovsky laughed.

"I do speak Russian."

"Please excuse my wife. She's often rude. And now some questions. How is it you Americans put it? Shoot!'"

"As emigres-"

"Exiles. You see, Mr. Boyce, we were thrown out. Or, to be precise, we were allowed to travel and then, just as we were about to go back, they denounced us and stripped us of our citizenships."

"They insist you made a deal to get out."

Targov laughed. "The KGB peddling trash. Their lies are so transparent, clumsy but dangerous. Very dangerous-don't you agree?"

"They're circulating-"

"I know. They've been showing it around for years. They'll try anything to discredit me, or anyone who dares to criticize. Have you heard their line on Solzhenitsyn? That he betrayed Vitkevich! They offer proof, a transcript. It's so laughable! From 1944!"

"Are you in touch with Solzhenitsyn?"

"Not anymore, but there was a time… His trouble, you see, is he has no charm. They invite him to Harvard, he decides to give them hell-believe me, I'm all for that! But then he botches it, puts on his stone face, thrashes his arms like a Cossack, and harangues them in Russian until they snore. I hope someday they invite me. I'll have a few things to tell them about their great and bountiful West. And maybe they'll listen because I won't make Solzhenitsyn's mistakes. For one thing, I'll address them in English. For another, I'll plunge in the needle where it hurts."

"What are your main criticisms of the West?" Boyce held his pencil poised.

"Moral cowardice. An obsession with money and success. A total misunderstanding of art. The most successful people here, and I include the artists, remind me of the hacks who rule our artists' unions back home."

"Yet you've been very successful here, Mr. Targov. And no one calls you a hack."

"Perhaps I am. That's for others to say. Or perhaps I'm simply bitter. You see, Mr. Boyce, when you're sitting in your freezing hovel in Moscow, unable to work, unable to gain commissions because your style doesn't suit the bureaucrats and their stupid party line, you think: 'In the West they care! They know how we suffer! They're our friends! They're petitioning! For them we must survive!' Then, if you're lucky enough to escape, you discover no one gave a hoot. Not only were people here totally unaware of you, when they do finally meet you they find you tiresome. You're so serious. You complain. You bite the hand that feeds you. Their worst accusation is that you're ideological. Can anything be more boring than that?"

"Do you respect American artists?"

"I respect Noguchi. But as a sculptor I cannot speak ill of sculptors. Painters are a different story." He winked at Boyce. "Who are your painters?"

"Stella. Rauschenburg. Fischl."

"Stella's a decorator. Clever, interesting sometimes, but I don't take him seriously."

"Robert Rauschenburg?"

"A distinguished artist, yet I wonder if he really cares. As for Fischl-" he laughed. "A puppy. Cute."

It was hours before Boyce left. When he did, Targov was exhausted. Such a show he'd put on, so many ripostes. Being alternately cagey, brilliant, supercilious, and profound had used up all his energy. He went to his room, wrapped himself in his quilt, tried to sleep but without success. Later he searched for Anna but she and Rokovsky had gone out for a walk. He wandered through the house, then crossed the grounds to his studio. He hadn't been in it in a week.

Today of all days, he thought, I must enter and try to work.

He unlocked the steel door, entered the vast room. The first thing he saw was Anna's cello. She had spent the morning practicing, had left her instrument on the platform along with her stool and music stand.

Barrels of clay were arranged to one side. Scaffolding stood ready to be assembled. Tools were laid out like a surgeon's before an operation. Maquettes of earlier work sat on stainless steel shelves.

He moved to the big window, the great wall of glass that looked out over the sea. Trees had been cut to open up the view. The weather was closing in. Fog was moving down the coast, would soon conceal the rocks and spume below.

Sergei out. He drops a casual postcard from Vienna. On his way to Israel… Oh God!

He looked at the large photograph of his Chicago crucifix bearing his writhing, defiant Christ. "I love the crucifixion in art," he had told Boyce, "the great ones are so controlled." He had also repeated for the ninetieth time his maxim: "I ask the clay what it wants to be and when it tells me I begin to sculpt." A moment of weakness-he had said it too many times, and now he hated it; he knew it was meaningless and fake.

He picked up the phone, dialed the house, was pleased to find Rokovsky back. "Send her to me in the studio," he told him. Then he stood before the window and watched the fog close in.

She knocked before she entered, a polite young person, though he was horrified at the sweat shirt she wore, black with the name of some ridiculous rock group scrawled in silver across the chest.

"Sasha…" She came to him. He took her in his arms.

"Irina tells me you're leaving."

She nodded. "Tomorrow. I'm going to New York."

"Tired of me?"

"Oh, Sasha."

"The lion is sixty now. Too old. I understand."

"Please."

"I've tried to help you."

"You have, you have."

"The introductions. The concert in Washington with Rostropovich. The top emigre circle-I got you in."

"Yes…"

"But now you want to go."

"I can't stay forever. Besides, Irina hates me."

"She hates everyone."

She broke away from him, shook her head. "You know I must go. They've found me an accompanist. I must play before audiences. Music is my life."

He nodded and turned away. Yes, just as sculpture once was mine…

After they made love he went to the refrigerator, brought out a bottle of Stolichnaya, poured them each a glass. "I've been wondering about you, Anna, whether you're really a Komsomol girl."

"What?" She was shocked. "How can you say a thing like that?"

"Could be," he teased her. "You've found out all my secrets, from me in bed and from Rokovsky too. Yes, I think you are a spy. They set up your 'defection' to confuse me. You were trained to be a femme fatale, then sent here to attach yourself, hold me, drain my vitality, render me impotent. Yes?"

"Oh, Sasha." She laughed. "Not impotent at all." She rose from the daybed and began to dress.

He emptied his glass, turned serious. "There's one secret I haven't told you yet."

"What's that?"

"I did something once."

"What did you do?"

"Named a name, betrayed a friend. You see, it's true, that old lie. I fibbed to Boyce."

"What are you talking about?" She was hooking her bra.

"My best friend… supposedly. Some friend! He was fucking my wife behind my back. I betrayed him, he was sent to the camps, and now after fifteen years he's out, out of the country too. He's a Jew-they're letting him go to Israel. I can't sleep. Have nightmares. Can't work anymore. Haven't felt the clay in my hands in months. I try to forget, want so much to forget. But every morning Irina reminds me. Her vengeance, of course. It keeps her alive."

She came to him, put her arms around him.

"I was an informer, Anna."

"But he betrayed you first."

"No excuse." He pressed his cheek against her hair and wept.

Later he asked her to play for him. 'The Arpeggione.' A last request."

"Without a piano-impossible."

"It doesn't matter. Your birthday gift to me. Play it alone, just the adagio. Please."

She paused, considering, then went to the platform, picked up her cello and began to tune it.

That ridiculous sweat shirt-it has to come off."

"Really!"

"Off!" he demanded.

She pulled it over her head.

"And the bra too. You look silly in it. The jeans are fine, but I want you bare above your waist."

She shrugged, unhooked her bra, threw it at him. He caught it, grinned, gazed back. He loved her leanness, the way her ribs showed taut beneath her pale skin, and above them her breasts, so firm and sassy, the nipples hard and arrogant.

He poured himself another vodka, then switched on the spotlights creating a kind of stage. When everything was finally ready, the cello tuned, the lighting perfect, he sat back upon the couch. Now you may begin."

She played the Schubert marvelously, and despite the sentimentality of the piece, he was moved by its dark feeling, so moved that, as she launched into the long melodic line, he lost himself in fantasy. He saw himself, a leonine old man, making love to this proud and beautiful cellist. And then, as she played on, bowed the last long dark passage, he shut his eyes and recalled the bitter cold of a windy winter afternoon fifteen years before, and then his rage as he had entered the living room of his Moscow flat and found Sergei Sokolov screwing Irina on the couch.